JANUARY 16, 2018

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December 24

Workshop Overview

A content strategy is a vital cog in today’s social media and digitally driven marketing machine.

Attending this workshop shows you what a content strategy is – BUT – also gives you the practical tools, tips and tricks, for you to build one, and walk away with everything you need to start building out your social media channels.

At our interactive “Content Strategy on a Page” Masterclass, you’ll build, design and refine your strategy, and walk away with your very own Content Strategy on a Page :

Why a Content Strategy is now more important than ever

What every Content Strategy must include

Single & Group activities – so you aren’t doing all the thinking yourself

Networking opportunities

Complimentary Barista made Coffee & Tea

Complimentary Breakfast or Lunch (pending your workshop time)

Agenda

The workshop is designed to take you on a step-by-step journey through every step in developing a Content Strategy.

1997 is arguably one the greatest years of Rock n Roll history. Radiohead released OK Computer predicting a future techno-centric world we arguably now find ourselves in; while there were blindingly fantastic songs such as The Verve ’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, Foo Fighters ‘My Hero’, and Blur’s ‘Song 2’ amongst Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’.

Along with this alumni, Everclear released their hit single, ‘Everything to Everyone’ – which in 2018 and our era of Cambridge Analytica, and Micro or Mass Marketing, holds a pertinent message we can use for marketing, and in particular those brands that do as they sang – and ‘try to be everything to everyone’.

Last week I had a moment of serendipity. After studying the theories and practices of audience segmentation, most notably around the schools of thought on ways to slice and dice markets, I met with the Chief Marketing Officer of a large sporting brand, and were chatting about their upcoming event. There’s a lot of challenges that said brand faces in a crowded market, especially when Sydney-siders can be so fickle around sport, always jumping on bandwagons when they appear, and then just as quickly jumping off when things go sour.

With this in mind, I pressed the CMO on who their audience is, and what segments of the market they were looking to attract – to be met with ‘we’re targeting everyone’.

Now, brands clearly can’t target everyone – and brands don’t exist for everyone. Unless of course you’re someone like Amazon – and even then an argument can be made against that notion.

There are 3 alarming issues for a brand that wants to ‘target everyone’ and doesn’t have a clear idea of market segmentation or who their target audience is.

1. Weak Messaging

If you’re trying to please everyone, you won’t have anything constructive, unique or relevant to convince people as to why your product or service is better than your competitors, and they should part with their hard earned cash for your product or service.

People are different. We’re not the same, we have unique attitudes, behaviours and motivators.

If you aren’t talking to any of these particular characteristics or motivators, you’re going to find yourself down the list of people’s priorities when they think of your brand.

By trying to be everything to everyone, your message will end up being so weak and vanilla that customers at best won’t notice notice you, or at worst will seek out more specific and relevant brands for their needs.

2. Lack of Brand Promise & Strategy

Due to your messages being so vague and weak, your Brand Promise and ultimately the sense of your Brand itself is inevitably watered down in order to make it as appealing and broad as possible.

In turn, this affects what customers take away from your brand – which is confusion because you’re using fluffy terms, and buzz language that doesn’t meet an actual need that consumers have.

3. Wasted Budget

More often than not, as a business, you’re trying to maximise your profit, by ensuring that the cost it takes to acquire a customer, is less than the cost it takes to reach a customer.

There is not a media channel in the world that will allow you to give a relevant message to a general audience.

You need to choose the right media, to get in front of the right person – at hopefully the right time.

Don’t waste your budget by going general – go specific, and look for the audiences that you can target with efficient media and use your budget efficiently.

The Solution

If you’re currently trying to target everyone, here’s 2 x things that you need to do immediately:

1. Audience Research

Get out there and understand your customers. Whether you want to do focus groups, or online survey’s – the benefits of this are immeasurable and set you up for success.

I once had a client, who thought their existing customer didn’t purchase their clothing inventory more often was because their range wasn’t extensive enough. After doing some research, we found out that the main reason they would purchase more often, was because they didn’t offer Free Shipping.

Turns out the client did offer Free Shipping, they just weren’t communicating it to their customers!

2. Segment your Audience

Once you’ve done your research you can segment the market to find out which audiences are worth chasing.

You’ll be in a position to understand the market as a whole, and it will be as if you’ve gained sight after being blind for your lifetime.

By trying to be everything to everyone, your brand and your marketing will be less for it. Find your target markets, understand your segments, and you’ll avoid the spinning around, falling down, stumbling and falling that Everclear foreshadowed.

There’s a few solid reasons as to why these stats matter, and why you should be bidding on your brand terms. In fact – there’s 7 and a half.

1. Hit The Gas – Speed Up The Purchase

So many options – catering to every need.

As we mentioned earlier, Google conducted a study on what would happen if your Branded Search Ads were paused – and they resoundingly found that “over 89% of the ads clicks are incremental, in the sense that the visits to the advertiser’s site would not have occurred without the [Brand] Ad Campaigns.

Users that search for your brand, are low in your customer sales funnel.

They’re already aware of your brand, they’re likely to be educated on it, and they are now either at consideration, or even better, at the action phase of their purchasing decision.

Make this decision easy for them.

In fact, you can make this purchase cycle even faster by generating instant customers with a “Click to Call” phone extension.

2. Send Users To A Specific Landing Page

So now that you know that these prospects are low in the funnel, you can assume that they’re weighing your product or service up against your competitors.

What’s going to tip them over the line?

How about advertising that Exclusive Offer or your seasonal promotion?

Again, it’s all about speeding up the purchase journey.

Send prospective customers straight to a specific Landing Page, it’s a great opportunity to highlight any offers you have.

Why don’t you take advantage of Foxtel’s “Special Online Offer”?

3. Control Your Messaging

In all likelihood, your SERP (Search Engine Results Page) results are the result of your Meta tagging and detail coded in the back end of your website.

This means that when someone searches for your Brand, Google is going to pull that data (which you’ve updated for SEO) and present that to them.

That’s good and well, but it may not be the right message you want to provide the market at that specific moment in time.

With Paid Ads, you control the messaging, and you can communicate exactly what you want to say, without it affecting your SEO.

There’s also that added benefit that – in the rather unfortunate case of that bad PR disaster that happened – you can hide any negative perceptions or news on the brand is hidden below the fold, so it’s only that dastardly scrollers that see it.

Did you know that Coca Cola No Sugar is here? You do now…

Let’s not even go here…Push it down the page already @Pepsi!

4. Extending The House

Probably one of the biggest advantages of Branded Search terms, are Ad Extensions.

You know right – those little highlighted links under your Ad.

They’re:

A great way to direct people to a certain part of your site (see Point 2)

Completely customisable by you (don’t leave it up to Google’s Organic results – See Point 3)

Awesome for calling Brand Promotions or USP’s out like “Free Delivery” or “Open 24/7”

Super easy for people to call from (especially now with the high Mobile usage amongst consumers)

Able to provide reassurance by highlighting customer testimonials and reviews.

Point me in the right direction, I may just go straight there

5. Location, Location, Location

If you live in Sydney, you know that every 3rd conversation generally comes around to real estate.

Where are you looking? How big a place do you need? When will the market ever come crashing down?

Well, by bidding on your Branded Search terms, you get more real estate on your SERP page.

Your page generally has a lot of information, it could have your business’ location, a Shopping feed, site links, reviews, the list goes on.

At the top of all of these – are Paid Ads.

Think of it as just putting on an extension to the house. you’ve now gone double storey.

6. Defence Is The Best Offence

If you’re in a competitive market, chances are that your competitors are bidding on your Brand.

If they’re smart, or have read this Blog Post, they’ve likely got a special deal going on to entice would be customers of yours to go and visit their site for a better deal.

One of the ways to combat this behaviour, is to get on the front foot, and dominate your Branded Search results.

Woah… That’s quite a competitive space.

7. Boost Your Average

As we all know, Google rewards you as an advertiser for having a good Quality Score.

Well, Branded Search terms will generally have the highest Quality Score of all your campaigns.

This is because people are down the funnel, the Ads have a high CTR, your Ad Relevance should be on point, and your Landing page experience will generally meet expectations.

By having a high QS for your Brand terms, your Account QS will improve, therefore your other campaigns can benefit and come down in cost simply by being associated with a quality campaign.

What’s the ½?

So, this should never be a reason to do anything, but there can be no denying that your branded terms are a super cheap and cost effective driver of traffic.

Of all your AdWords campaigns, the Brand Campaign with it’s high CTR and high Quality Score will be one of the cheapest Campaigns you run.

It’s also going to be one of the highest converting campaigns you run. That’s just a measure of where it is in the funnel.

In Summary

So there you have it, 7½ comprehensive reasons that you should be bidding on your Brand terms.

If you currently aren’t bidding on your Brand Terms, I can understand the hesitation in suddenly putting budget where you think the return won’t be generated, but – at least test it – see what effect it has on overall traffic to site, and weigh up the pro’s and con’s for yourself.

As 2016 draws to a close and we look forward to what 2017 can bring, the pace of change amongst one of the worlds largest media publishers continues to amaze us.

The challenge for marketers, is to know which new innovations and features that Facebook release are worth investing time and energy into.

To help you stay ahead and keep an eye on what to look out for, we’ve put together our Top 5 Trends to watch our for with Facebook Advertising in 2017.

1. Video Live Streaming

Meerkat was one of the first platforms to really bring live streaming video to the masses, and with Facebook Live, marketers have a readily accessible vehicle to give behind the scenes, educational, or even event updates to their audience.

We’ve already seen higher organic reach and results through Facebook Live, and with Facebook placing more and more emphasis on ‘video’ as a preferred content medium, expect this space to amplify next year.

2. Immersive Storytelling For Publishers & Brands

The introduction of Instant Articles, has allowed Facebook to become another distribution channel for many news-based organisations, as they can reap the benefits of reduced load time, completely optimised delivery, and an almost completely native home.

As Facebook’s News Feed, becomes increasingly more and more ‘news’ focused rather than ‘friends status’ based – many publishers are tapping into this by providing rich and insightful articles that are shared up to 30% more than their web based news pages.

As a marketer, if your brand isn’t using Canvas ads, you are losing out on engagement, clicks, and conversions. We’ve seen a large increase in overall engagement from Canvas Ads, as audiences become familiar with brands’ ability to tell their narrative, and control the messages and images or video they see.

4. Custom Audiences Are The New Norm

Having just one Facebook conversion pixel has made making Custom Audiences easier, and with targeting audiences and customers even more a priority for Facebook Advertisers – it comes as no surprise, that the ability to create niche Custom Audiences are becoming more a focus for brands and marketers.

No longer are you simply relying on website visitors, or fans of your Page.

Now, you can create Custom Audiences, based on Video Engagement, who’s opened your Lead Form, who’s opened your Lead Form but didn’t complete it!

The opportunities this presents marketers keen to target specific audiences is huge, it means that the messaging and Ads you create become more tailored and bespoke, not only for your audiences, but for your audiences engagement history.

5. Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality

Finally, Facebook 360 has really brought the immersive world to your screen.

This point needs it’s own point, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of this next year – much more than Instant Articles and Canvas, as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality hit the mainstream.

One only needed to be a bystander to Pokemon Go earlier this year, to see the huge impact that Augmented Reality is going to have – and how it’s going to be a mobile first experience – exactly what Facebook has been moving towards the last few years.

Did we mention that Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion?

You don’t make that kind of investment without some serious thoughts around how to bring VR to the masses.

How to use Audience Overlap

Lucky for you, Facebook have made it super easy to check your audiences.

You can access the Audience Overlap tool in Ads Manager or Power Editor.

When looking at your audiences, check which audiences you want to see the overlap between.

NOTE: You can choose up to 5 x audiences, but an audience must have at least 1,000 people to be viewed.

Then, under Actions, choose the option that says Show Audience Overlap.

You will see a screen like the below that shows you the different overlaps between audiences.

Under Selected Audience, you will see your main audience you want to compare other audiences against.

You can change this in the drop down box in the Selected Audience box.

Underneath, in the Comparison Audiences, you can see different audiences, and how many people, and what percentage of overlap there is in the audiences.

In my example, I’ve compared a Lookalike Audience of my Prospects & Customers, with a lookalike audience of my Website Visitors. There’s a very small overlap which means that there will be minimal wastage of any spend if I marketed to both AdSets.

Similarly, I’ve compared my Prospects & Customers Lookalike Audience with a Lookalike Audience that completed a Lead Form, and there is no overlap, so again, good news when marketing to the AdSets.

You can remove Audiences, by either clicking on the ‘X’ to the right of each audience, or you can add more audiences by clicking the ‘+’ sign at the bottom of the Audience Overlap screen.

What if I have a large percentage?

If you have two audiences with a high percentage of overlap you need to refine your AdSet targeting and make it more specific so that you can further seperate your audiences and ensure that your AdSets aren’t marketing to the same audience.

If you have specific audiences that overlap, another thing you could do is to compile and amalgamate your audiences into fewer AdSets.

Final thoughts

There’s a number of ways you can use Audience Overlap to fine tune your Facebook marketing, and not just through identifying overlapping audiences.

For example, you could try to understand the value of your Facebook Fans by comparing these against your website visitors (to see whether your Fans visit your page), or if they have the same interests & behaviours that you want to target.

Your thoughts

So there you go, why not login to your Ads Manager or Power Editor and give Audience Overlap a spin.

Of all the tools that Facebook has provided marketers in their arsenal of weaponry, the Facebook Pixel is by far the one that marketers should familiarise themselves with and learn how to use.

The Facebook Pixel allows you to retarget people who visit your website, create customised audiences, and understand how many conversions your ads are delivering so you can see which adverts are working best.

The conversion pixel will soon become your new best friend as you will be able to determine which ads are delivering results to meet your campaign and business objectives. Conversions could be as simple as a click to your website or web page, a completed lead form or sign up, to a product purchase.

How to Create the Facebook Pixel

Your first step is to create the Facebook Pixel. You can read about how easy it is to create the pixel in our previous post. If you haven’t had a chance to create the pixel and need to understand how to do it, head on over to the post here. It will take 2 minutes…

How to Install the Facebook Pixel

Now that you’ve created your pixel, it’s important to understand what it exactly is. The Facebook Pixel is essentially a piece of code that can be inserted into your website and on every page.

The Facebook pixel code contains two key elements:

Main Pixel Code

The Main Code sets a benchmark for you to track how many Page Views you receive, and should be installed on every page.

Event Pixel Code

The Event Code tracks ‘events’, or ‘actions’, that people take, i.e. registration form completion, product purchase, and should be installed on specific pages.

To install the Event Pixel Code:

For example, if you want to measure how many users fill out a registration form, copy the Complete Registration code

Again, in the back end of your website, place the relevant code on the relevant pages.

Add your Event Code separately before </script>

Here is an example of what your Facebook Pixel Code will look like with a standard event included.

Your website original code

Your Facebook Main Pixel Code

Your Facebook Event Pixel Code

These are the 9 x types of Standard Events (and their corresponding code) that you can add:

Website action

Standard event code

View content

fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);

Search

fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);

Add to cart

fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’);

Add to wishlist

fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToWishlist’);

Initiate checkout

fbq(‘track’, ‘InitiateCheckout’);

Add payment info

fbq(‘track’, ‘AddPaymentInfo’);

Make purchase

fbq(‘track’, ‘Purchase’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘USD’});

Lead

fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);

Complete registration

fbq(‘track’, ‘CompleteRegistration’);

IMPORTANT TIP

Place the Standard Event Code on the page where Facebook knows the conversion has happened.

For example, if you are after registration forms completion, you would put the Lead code on the page where the user will land to fill out the form, and your Complete Registration code on the ‘thank you’ page after the Lead has been completed.

So there you go!

You’ve now created and installed the Facebook Pixel on your website – which means not only are you avoiding the 1 critical mistake many Facebook marketers make, but you’re now able to get a greater degree of insight into which adverts are doing well, which campaigns and ads are converting, and how best you can manage your budget.

If you have any questions on the Facebook Pixel, or want some help with your Facebook marketing, be sure to let us know and we’ll help you straight away!

The start of a new year brings many things. Returning unwanted Christmas gifts. The annual visit to the dentist. A hangover. However by now, after you’ve cleaned up from New Years Day, your thinking is clearer, you’ve recovered and you’re trying to remember what those promises were that you slurred those few minutes before midnight to improve your life in the next 12 months.

Theatre companies are no different.

Coming back from the Xmas/NY break, you feel refreshed, full of energy to tackle the year ahead and plough head long into the campaigns and productions in the works.

Before you do that though, here we’ve put together 4 x New Years resolutions that every theatre should make if they haven’t already.

1. Create a Marketing Plan

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

If you’re starting the New Year without a marketing plan on how to achieve your goals, it goes to stand that 12 months from now you’ll be in a similar spot to where you are now.

The skeleton of your plan should consist of 4 key areas:

Vision

Have a clear understanding of the reasoning behind your existence. Yourartistic vision gives purpose to your company and outlines where you want to go in the future.

Goals

The long term purpose to which you’re striving. Your goals should feed from your vision and ultimately help you achieve your artistic vision.

Strategies

Your strategies detail the numerous ways, resources and initiatives that you’ll employ in order to achieve your goals.

Objectives

Objectives should have a short to mid term focus with quantifiable and measurable specific actions that will help reach associated strategies.

2. Know ‘Who’ Your Audience Is

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits them and sells itself.” ~ Peter Drucker
If you can’t specify who your audience is, you need to start!

A segmented audience means that your marketing will be delivered via a rifle rather than a shotgun.

The more targeted your marketing can become, the more efficient it will be and the greater the results will be.

We’ve spoken previously before about how to identify your target audience, you can read more about that here.

3. Capture the Right Data

“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” ~ Daniel Keys Moran

Building on top of any audience segmentation you have, it’s important to understand what additional data you’re capturing, and what insight you want delivered.

Capturing data should be the building blocks to each key initiative in your marketing plan.

Whether you want to understand when ticket sales occur, the effectiveness of your marketing, or even the amount of snacks sold at the interval, if you have questions that pertain to the performance of your theatre, you need to be capturing the right data.

4. Build a Social Content Calendar

“Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life.” ~ Avinash Kaushik.

In the past few years, ‘content’ has become the buzz word for any social mediacampaign, but it’s important that the content you’re producing is relevant to your audience.

As a theatre, you have an abundance of content to promote and a variety of media to distribute through.

By utilising a social media content calendar you can begin to make your content proactive rather than reactive.

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